


A Study in Snow

by Anonymous



Category: Elementary
Genre: Christmas, Christmas Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Kid Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:06:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/collections/anonymous/works/1110428">this fic</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study in Snow

"Santa! Santa! Santa!"

Joan was barely through the front door when Charlie, wearing socks but no shoes, skidded out of the living room doorway and executed a near-perfect hockey-stop against one leg of the hallway console table that held the morning's post and a side-lamp that was nowadays composed of more crazy glue than china. The lamp, recently relocated from an end-table in the living room to avoid precisely this sort of situation, wobbled, but thankfully this time, stayed upright. Ice-skating lessons had been a wise investment, Joan reflected wryly.

"Oh, it's you." Charlie deflated visibly, he turned and shouted over his shoulder back the way he'd come, "It's just Mom!"

From the front room a faintly distracted hi mom, told her Alex was either engaged a critical nail art moment or battling a particularly challenging level Boss.

Joan raised an eyebrow at her son. "Oh, it's me?"

"What time is Santa getting here?" he asked her, breathlessly, unperturbed.

"I'm not sure," Joan stripped off her coat and gloves. "What time are you planning to remember your manners?"

There was a slight pause while Charlie's brain shifted gears. "Sorry. Hi mom," he said, and immediately shifted back again. "Can I stay up for Santa?"

"Apology accepted. And you know the answer to that." Joan frowned at the extra coat on the rack, stepping past him towards the kitchen. "Where's your Uncle?"

He shrugged "I dunno. Then can I watch Christmas Shrek?"

"Sure," she told him, glancing at her watch, "But no ogre sounds."

Charlie took off at his usual breakneck speed into the front room, what might have been a "Thanks mom!" lost under yelp of surprise from Alex.

"And no running in socks." Joan called after him to no effect whatsoever. She sighed and headed into the kitchen.

~

"Sherlock?"

"He's in the garden."

The kitchen was a sea of food in various stages of preparation, miniature pies, trays of blinis, tiny sausages rolled with bacon and herbs, cheeses under a bulbous glass dome, a dozen different vegetables in covered pyrex dishes, caramel coloured profiteroles cooling on a rack beside a plate of coconut truffles. They certainly wouldn't be lacking for food tonight or tomorrow, or right up to New Year's Joan reflected, eyeing the mess. 

In the middle of the chaos Mycroft was performing something complicated with a goose, three bowls of stuffing and several other bird carcasses of varying sizes. He smiled in greeting. She pressed a kiss to his cheek, but looked nervously out to the patio.

"Tell me you've kept him away from the spare room."

"I have. The presents remain undeduced." 

"Good." She filled the kettle and set it to boil, leaning against the counter to watch him work. "How many birds are you trying to fit in there?"

"It's a traditional seven bird roast." He defended, kneading stuffing into the crevices of what looked like it might have once been a partridge.

"Last year it was a traditional five." 

"And that was such a success, I thought why not try seven. It's barely any more trouble." He gestured to a pair of tiny birds, "I don't even have to debone the quails."

"Sherlock goaded you into this, didn't he." Joan observed, astutely.

"Not even a little bit. I mean, yes it was a dish Cook used to make when we were younger, but... ok a little bit." Mycroft admitted, struggling to gather the edges of the goose together and skewer them closed around the rest of the birds. Stuffing squeezed out between the joins, his fingers slipped and the birds popped open again. "Damn."

Joan sighed and retrieved the butcher's string from behind a bowl of cranberries.

"You know two of the guys on my Anatomy course took the last lab stoned. They managed to sew four lungs, two hearts, two livers and a library book inside one of the bodies and I still think they'd have trouble getting this to stay closed." she told him, looping the string round the meat.

"Well, they didn't have these hands helping them." Mycroft brushed a thumb over her knuckles.

She smiled at him. "Flattery--"

"Will get me...?" He turned on his most charmingly filthy smile and Joan was about to say not a thing with your brother under this roof and an open case on the docket, unless you want a repeat of last time, which some of us are still mortified over by the way, but the kettle whistled.

"I've got this." she told him.

Mycroft nodded. "Chamomile?"

"Can we make it Assam? I think we'll want to go over those files after the kids are in bed."

He shot her sympathetic look. "That much luck with the footage?"

"Less." 

They'd been on this case for 48hours and they still had not a single plausible idea, let alone a lead. 

"I'm beginning to think we're losing our touch." she admitted.

"You are definitely not losing your touch," He reassured her, "Or your skills at putting things back together apparently," he added, impressed, as she finished tying off the birds.

"Mmm," Joan frowned, "I wish Sherlock didn't give me so much opportunity for practice there. Though speaking of minor surgery," She lifted the goose's head which was still attached, via its neck, to the rest of its body. "Emergency craniectomy?"

"The head's the best part." He protested.

Joan fixed him with a dubious look. "I knew letting Sherlock talk you into an Instagram account was a mistake. Don't even try to pretend this isn't part of that ridiculous feud you have going with Gordon. And you know what Alex is like with any food that still has a face."

"Firstly, he started it and it's a matter of professional honor." Mycroft asserted primly. "Secondly," he added, "she had some of that pig's head on Halloween."

"Only because ~Chesney~ was there." Joan pressed her hands to her chest and fluttered her eyelashes to illustrate just how "dreamy" Chesney was.

Mycroft smirked as she nudged him out of the way to get at the sink. "You're a cruel mother."

"C'mon, really?" Joan dried her hands and accepted a steaming mug from him. "He was insufferable."

"Yes, he really, really was." Mycroft glanced pointedly out at the garden. "I was sure you two would become firm friends."

She smacked him lightly on the arm. He grabbed her wrist and pulled her in for a kiss. When they separated he handed her a second mug of tea. "Go, solve your impossible art heist." He looked around as if taking in the disheveled kitchen for the first time. "I'll clean up here."

"Well, you did make precisely all of the mess." Joan reminded him on her way into the garden.

~

She found Sherlock at the bottom of the garden standing vigil over three silent hives.

"Do you know, Watson, almost two in three British hives failed to make it through the winter last year." Sherlock said, his expression shadowed, unreadable in what little light reached them from the kitchen.

He accepted the mug of tea from her and Joan cast her gaze over the three squat, white boxes. They'd had a good summer, amazing actually, she still had almost a shelf full of honey in the larder. "They're strong hives, I'm sure they'll be fine."

"Of course they will," Sherlock agreed. "This particular hybrid is extremely winter-hardy and I convinced Mrs Hooper down the road to stop using Nithiazine on her roses. Well, I say convinced-" he shot Joan a sidelong glance. "When she runs out, we may have to nip back in and switch out the contents of the new bottle for something more agreeable, so to speak."

Joan made a mental note to add an extra bottle of wine and some extremely nice chocolates to Mrs Hooper's Christmas present, and double-check what make of burglar alarm she was running when she dropped it off.

"Lestrade's convinced it's going to snow tonight." She told him, looking up at the sky. Patches of cloud caught the city's light their bellies faintly orange. "50 to 1 at the bookies, but he put £300 on it this afternoon."

"I know," Sherlock said following her gaze. "I told him to. Sort of a Christmas present."

"Sherlock!"

"I'm good for three hundred pounds, Watson. If he loses, which he won't."

"Forecast said the skies would clear." Joan replied. She could already pick out Orion's belt twinkling through gaps in the cloud cover.

Sherlock sipped his tea. "Met office, what do they know." He huffed out a foggy breath. "Background checks on the gallery staff have been, thus far, useless, by the way. May I assume from the manner in which you're avoiding the subject that the timecode analysis on the security footage has been similarly unfruitful?"

Joan sighed inwardly, back to work. "No tampering whatsoever," she told him. "According to the tech guys, everything right back to the last foot patrol in each room is clean." She shook her head. "It doesn't make sense."

The missing paintings, of which there were seven, had been visible and untouched locked inside empty rooms according to the gallery's CCTV, right up until midnight when, during a five second glitch in the tape -- the time between the security system's power cutting out and its top-of-the-line emergency back-up generator cutting in -- all seven had disappeared. It'd taken twelve extremely long and migraine-inducing hours to pick through the digital features of every frame of footage and confirm that no-one had spliced, looped or otherwise altered the camera feeds to cover the theft.

"We don't have all the variables." Sherlock mused. "There's something there we're not seeing."

Joan shivered and wrapped her hands tighter around her mug. "C'mon." She turned back to the house. "It's freezing out here and those staff records aren't gonna background check themselves."

As he followed her, she added "By the way, I hope you don't mind Shrek."

"Ah, Charlie." Sherlock nodded and held up a finger. "Speaking of which: Kindle Fire, Incredible Hulk onesie, Iron Man Meccano Workshop, yes?"

"What--?" Joan gaped at him. "Did you follow me last week?"

"Not at all, and if you have to ask that, Watson, we really should refresh your counter surveillance training. But if you must know, you should hide your carrier bags better," he admonished. "And your receipts."

"Or you could stop checking the neighbours' wheelie bins every time you visit." Joan countered, tugging open the patio doors.

"I wouldn't have to if you didn't keep using them to hide things from me." Sherlock replied loftily. "And what about the time I deduced Mr Pentergast had run over that cat? Poor Fluffy's--"

"Jasper," Joan corrected.

"Poor Jasper's owners would've been searching high and low for him for days if I hadn't tracked them down."

She still avoided Mr Pentergast whenever she saw him in the street, and Jasper's owners avoided her, being understandably wary of the sort of people whose friends like to dig through their neighbours' trash and count identifying vehicle models from tyre-treads in roadkill amongst their skillset. Still, on balance, Joan supposed Sherlock had made the right call there.

"If Charlie finds out," she warned him.

"My lips are sealed," Sherlock assured her, "Although Alex may have wrangled the exact value of her iTunes giftcard out of me," he added apologetically. "And RE: those concert tickets, you should know that nobody cool listens to Lorde anymore, apparently."

Joan glared at him. In response he reached out a hand and lightly touched her hair; her annoyance morphed into confusion.

"What are you--?"

Something cold touched her cheek and then again on her nose. Sherlock held out his hand and in the light from the kitchen she could see, melting on the tip of his finger, a single snowflake. Joan looked up, the sky was full of them, partial cloud cover be damned.

"Oh ye of little faith." Sherlock smirked before ducking past her into the kitchen.

Joan stared at the sky a moment longer. "Merry Christmas, Greg Lestrade," she muttered, before following him inside.

~

Joan awoke to the delicate pulse of fairy lights and the perculiar silence that rides on the back of heavy snowfall. She was folded awkwardly into an armchair in the living room. In the grate the fire was down to embers, and whilst she'd slept someone had moved her laptop to the coffee table and covered her with a blanket. Joan stretched, wincing as her spine popped. She grabbed the computer and roused it from sleep, squinting as her eyes adjusted to the bright screen. She'd been running through the security footage again, the beginning of the files right around the last foot patrol before the rooms locked down. Something niggling at her, some memory, some variable she wasn't seeing. Groggily she watched the security guard silently circle a room in a wide arc then turn and retrace his steps. The next room and the next room, maybe she was looking too hard, Joan let her eyes relax, the guard walked a circuit round another room and another. Nothing. 

She jabbed the pause button. Tea, she decided, standing and setting the laptop back on the coffee table. She caught sight of the clock, 4am, Charlie would be up in an hour or so, full of Christmas energy. A glance at the tree told her Mycroft had already fetched the kids' presents from the spare room. Coffee then, she amended, padding into the kitchen. Lots of coffee with extra sugar.

At the far end of the kitchen the lights from the patio filtered through illuminating the room, and that was the first thing wrong with that picture. The second was that the patio doors were standing ajar.

Joan ran a quick inventory of the room. Nothing was out of place, nothing knocked over. The glass in both doors was intact, the wood around the locks looked unsplintered. She craned her neck to look into the hall and deduced from the steady green lights on the alarm panel that either it hadn't been set that evening or it had been deactivated. She held her breath and counted to 60, ears straining for any sound of an intruder's movement in the house, but nothing stirred.

Silently, she backed out of the kitchen into living room and slipped back into the shoes she'd kicked off next to the armchair earlier that evening. Grabbing a poker from beside the fireplace, she crept back into the kitchen and to the back door.

The snowfall had been heavy. It blanketed the entire garden, reaching all the way up to the house apart from two wedges where the doors had been pulled open. A single set of bootprints led up to the wedges and away from them. To the right of the doors something had left a large round depression in the snow. Sherlock and Mycroft were out in the middle of the lawn, wrapped in parkas, wellies sunk deep into the snow, each engrossed in poking at the ground with a singlestick.

Joan pushed the doors open and coughed politely.

Both men startled and twisted to face her, lower bodies locked in position, arms outstretched warning her back, urging her to stay put.

 _What is going on?_ Joan started to ask, but Sherlock hushed her immediately with a finger to his lips. His brow furrowed momentarily then he stretched his arms out at his sides and began flailing them furiously. Baffled she shook her head and mouthed _What?_ Sherlock glared at her and his movements became even sharper.

Mycroft ducked a particularly enthusiastic downswing. He made a sharp _Cut it out_ gesture and Joan heard him angrily whisper "Enough!" Sherlock pulled a face and Mycroft began picking his way over to her, shaking his head and stepping only, she noticed, in the set of prints that led directly to the door.

"What--?"Joan demanded when he reached her. He winced and shushed her.

"The kids."

"What is going on?" Joan whispered.

"It was Sherlock's idea."

"I can see that--" She gestured to the lawn where Sherlock had returned to poking the snow with his singlestick. "--since it looks entirely insane. What _is_ it?"

Mycroft opened his mouth as if to explain, but paused instead frowning as if he'd been quite certain he could conjure a justification, right up to the moment he tried to do so. He sighed and held out his hand. "It's easier if I just show you. But only step exactly where I step."

"Okay," Joan whispered, leaning the poker against the doorjam and following him warily.

Mycroft followed the set of prints leading away from the door, which Joan realised as they got closer led directly to Sherlock. When they reached the lawn, she could see there were two long furrows gouged into the snow. Overlapping with those were dozens of small depressions. The footprints led from one side of the gouges to the patio doors, and back from the doors to the other side of the lines. Next to the gouges one bench of the picnic table beneath the apple tree bore a large depression similar to the one by patio doors. When Mycroft reached Sherlock, there was some sort of negotiation and then Sherlock turned and climbed up onto the bench. Mycroft followed him, turning round and offering Joan a hand up. She took it, and the three of them stood pressed close together in the strange depression, looking out over the lawn. Mycroft unzipped his parka and wrapped it around them both.

Joan smiled snuggling into his warm chest. She shot Sherlock a sidelong glance. "Well?"

"'Well' indeed, Watson." Sherlock griped in an irritated whisper. "I e-mailed you that whitepaper on speed semaphore months ago."

"Oh," Joan realised. "That was what that flailing--"

"Speed semaphore," he corrected her brusquely. "Which you'd know if you'd read the whitepaper."

"It's on my to-read list." She assured him.

"And as for you, Fatty," Sherlock continued. "Your hoofprints are completely off. Reindeer don't have that sort of gait at all."

"I don't think he'll notice." Mycroft whispered.

"You don't think he'll notice that Santa's sleigh is half being pulled by antelope?" Sherlock whispered raising a wholly incredulous eyebrow.

"Oh for God's sake," Mycroft groaned and pressed his face into Joan's hair. 

"He is only six, Sherlock." she agreed.

"And the earlier he learns that attention to detail is an essential life skill, the better."

"You did this for Charlie?" Joan asked, ignoring him.

Mycroft nodded. "Do you like it? As I said, it was Sherlock's idea."

"Well," Sherlock said bashfully, and then not so bashfully, "not the antelope, clearly."

"I'm surprised." Joan admitted. "I would've thought you'd be all for children learning the truth about Santa as soon as possible."

Sherlock frowned for a moment she worried irrationally that she'd offended him. Eventually he spoke. "The world can be a cruel and extremely... limited place, Watson. You and I know this perhaps better than most. Childhood with its innocence, it's boundless imagination, the belief that anything, no matter how improbable, is possible, is a gift. And we have a duty to protect that gift for as long as possible." He turned to her. "So? Biomechanical inaccuracies aside, what do you think?"

Joan took in the garden, the scene playing out in her head -- the landing, Santa heaving his sack of toys onto the bench, carrying it to the house, resting it next to the doors whilst he opened them, walking back to the sleigh, and taking off into the night. She imagined it through Charlie's eyes.

"I think it's perfect." she whispered, smiling, imagining all the work that must've gone into constructing the scene. A worrying thought occurred to her. "Though I hope the neighbours were in bed before you started," she whispered to Mycroft, "The Petersens already think we're crazy."

He pressed a kiss to the tip of her ear. "Sod them."

"Couldn't agree more, Fatty." Sherlock stepped carefully down onto the lawn and smoothed over the snow in the depression where he'd stood. "And remember, to preserve these footprints exactly, we have to walk backwards to the house." he said, and proceeded to do precisely that.

Mycroft eyed the neighbouring houses. "The Petersens are in bed by now, surely."

Joan grinned, but as she watched Sherlock's wobbly progress across the lawn as he did his best not to disrupt the outlines of Santa's footprints, a thought struck her.

~

Sherlock was already brewing coffee when she and Mycroft made it back inside.

"I know how they pulled off the heist," Joan told him, pulling off her damp shoes and leaving them by the door. 

Abandoning the espresso machine, Sherlock followed her into the living room. "A Christmas miracle? Do tell, Watson."

Joan grabbed her laptop and brought up the browser. "There's this urban artist, Mycroft and I went to see one of his installations that summer we took the Alex to Munich?" 

Sherlock nodded sagely. "Ah, the Summer of Discontent."

"You know, you can stop calling it that any time now. I had morning sickness."

"And it put you in a _foul_ temper." Sherlock told her. "I theorised you were gestating the Anti-Christ. Mycroft agreed."

Joan smacked his arm. "He did not." Oh her husband was in big trouble. "Anyway, here." She passed him the laptop. Sherlock scanned the page she'd loaded. Mycroft emerged from the kitchen with a trio of coffee mugs. He gave one to Joan and waited patiently for Sherlock to finish with the laptop.

"So this man's schtick is he projects images onto famous landmarks. I'm afraid I don't see the relevance," Sherlock said finally. He handed the computer back to her and accepted a mug of coffee from his brother. 

"Oh, are you talking about... whasshisname," Mycroft frowned, "the graffiti guy from that summer in Munich. Bismark"

"Damien," Joan corrected, juggling the laptop and coffee mug as she brought up the security footage. "Or wait, sorry, that was what you wanted to name Charlie?"

For a split second Mycroft's eyes widened before he smoothed his face into a look of complete innocence. When she glanced back down at the computer screen, she saw in the room's reflection him shooting Sherlock a glare. Oh, he was in _colossal_ trouble.

"The images can't be seen by the naked eye," Joan went on. "They only show up on digitally recorded images, something to do with the way the sensors process light." She turned the laptop so Sherlock could see the screen as well. "This is the guard checking a room where no paintings were stolen, and this is the same guard checking the room that housed the Magritte, notice how in this room he doesn't make a complete circle."

"He avoids walking between those benches and the wall the painting's hanging on." Mycroft observed.

"Was hanging on," She corrected. "I think the heist went down hours before this footage was shot, that's why we couldn't find any evidence of tampering with the tapes. We were looking at the wrong batch of footage. It would be easy to hide projection devices underneath those benches and use a signal to turn them off as soon as the power went out. In a robbery, everyone's looking at the doors, the skylights, ways into the rooms, a small device could easily pass unnoticed. You'd just need someone to collect them at a later time."

"I wondered why only paintings on the same walls as the doorways were taken." Sherlock mused. He pulled out his phone. "I'll have Lestrade pull the guard in. Excellent work Watson."

"Thanks." Joan shivered, suddenly realising she was freezing. She handed her laptop to Mycroft. "I'm gonna grab a sweater, will one of you get the fire going?"

"Sure."

"And I'll look in on Damian while I'm up there," she added.

Mycroft winced. "In my defense, that was very difficult pregnancy for me. By which I mean for both of us, obviously." he quickly amended.

Joan cocked an eyebrow. 

"And I'm making three different types of chocolate snow bombe for dessert." Mycroft added. 

"Uh-huh." Joan headed for the stairs.

"And a lemon parfait." He called after her. "And I love you."

Joan smiled to herself but didn't turn around.

"Should've gone with sticky toffee pudding." She heard Sherlock advise him. "I love you lacks a certain... custard. Watson definitely prefers custard."

~

When Joan reached the top of the stairs she found Alex loitering by the window at the end of the first-floor hallway, sporting a rumpled dressing gown, a worried look creasing her face. 

"Mom, what's going on? Did someone plant landmines in our garden?"

"What-?" Joan struggled a moment before she caught sight of the lawn from the window behind her. "Oh you saw us, and with the stepping-"

"And the poking." Her daughter mimic'd how Sherlock and Mycroft had been jabbing at the snow. Her brows knit in confusion. "And the YMCA. Is Uncle Sherlock alright?"

"He's fine," Joan shook her head smiling at the image. "Well, for certain values of fine anyway. There's nothing to worry about," she assured Alex, "go back to bed." A floorboard above their heads creaked and she glanced apprehensively up the stairs to the second floor. "If you're lucky you'll get another couple of hours sleep before your brother wakes up." Joan added.

Which was, naturally, speaking too soon. 

Above them bedroom door slammed open. Joan winced imagining chipped paint on the wall behind it. Charlie clattered onto the landing, squealing. "Mom! Dad! Santa! Santa!" He hurtled down the stairs a blur of red and collided with Joan's hip. She smiled, seeing that Mycroft with characteristic foresight had dressed him in his Iron Man onesie. 

"Mom! Santa's been and he landed in our garden!" Charlie bounced on the spot. A Tigger onesie might've been more appropriate, Joan reflected.

"Really? In _our_ garden?" She said, playing along.

Charlie grabbed her hand and dragged her over to the window, climbing onto the ancient iron radiator beneath it to get a better view. "Look!" Joan steadied him as he wobbled against the glass. "He didn't land in anyone else's garden," Charlie pointed out, "so it must be because our decorations are the best!" He nodded suddenly solemn. "I deduced that."

Alex pursed her lips to cover a smile. "I'm going back to bed," she told Joan.

"Oh no you are not." Joan countered. There was no way she was being left alone on Christmas morning with the Holmes brothers, who could start an argument over how to make scrambled eggs, and her Eveready bunny of a youngest child. "Go downstairs and tell your Dad to start breakfast," Joan told her.

Alex pouted, but did as she asked.

"And please keep your Uncle away from the presents." Joan called after her.

"Too late." her daughter called back, breezily. 

"Presents?!" Charlie wriggled out of Joan's arms and slid down off the radiator. He sprinted past Alex. "Presents! Presents! Time for Presents! Mine first!" 

"Actually you might be surprised," Joan told her as the sound of his feet thumping down the stairs faded. "Apparently Sherlock thinks Lourde and Beyonce are the same person."

Alex's jaw dropped. "Shut up!"

Downstairs something that sounded suspiciously like their much-abused lamp crashed to the floor, followed instantaneously by an "I didn't do it!" from Charlie.

Joan performed some calculations in her head and decided that yes, it was entirely possible that he'd been conceived around 6am on the 6th June. Maybe Sherlock and Mycroft were right afterall. She followed her daughter downstairs, eager to see how the Anti-Christ would enjoy his superhero workshop.


End file.
